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I am wondering how long snow leopard will be supported, my mom's mac mini has snow leopard on it and i am wondering how much longer snow leopard will be supported or if i should set her up with lion now.

Snow Leopard is at the .3 patch level right now and I wouldn't expect a .4 anytime soon or ever. The bulk of the work is going to be done on 10.8 Mountain Lion and future versions of OS X. Even Lion might not getting many updates..

Depending on the specs of the Mac Mini, Lion might be a good upgrade..and on the flip side, if things are working well with Snow Leopard right now, is there really a reason to upgrade?

Unless you already own Lion (OS 10.7)...you're going to have REALLY difficult time getting it. Since it hasn't been available on the Mac App Store since Mountain Lion was released (approx. July, 2012).

- Nick

- Too many "beachballs", read this: Beachballs- Computer seems slower than it used to? Read this for some slow computer tips: Speedup- Almost full hard drive? Some solutions. Out of Space- Apple Battery Info. Battery

I think the OS X adoption rates (for people with supported hardware) has been pretty good, so I wouldn't think Apple would spend a lot of energy keeping an OS 2 versions prior to the current one up to date..

Here's my opinion: Apple's Snow Leopard (10.6.8) is the equivalent of Microsoft's XP. It's not going away any time soon because it's a rock solid version of OS X and while it's Intel only, it supports PPC apps with the built in Rosetta.

The truth is that nobody here knows how long Snow Leopard will be supported. My *guess* would be a lot less time than chscag thinks -- machine attrition will take care of most SL users over time, and ML adoption is already massive:

As you can see, the base is basically all on Snow Leopard and higher, which means they have access to the Mac App Store, which means they can buy the upgrade to ML or whatever comes after ML.

I would recommend to people who CAN upgrade to Mountain Lion to do so -- it's cheap, it's good, and you will significantly reduce any chance of problems when you upgrade to 10.9 or whatever they're going to call it.

If your hardware is quite old and/or just barely meets the required spec for ML, and you know you're going to be replacing it soon, you might opt to just stay where you are. I have a 2007 BlackBook that ran Lion just fine but if I were to sell it I'd put Snow Leopard on it for the best experience, given it's limited RAM capacity and lesser graphics card.

There's not really any path to Lion anymore, so that avenue is essentially closed and Lion numbers will fall significantly by year's end, you can rest assured. Apple could be making the update to Mountain Lion a LOT more "mandatory" than they have thus far, but they are apparently comfortable as long as the vast majority of the base are at least on Snow Leopard, which set the stage for everything that has come since.

I agree no one knows how long Apple may or may not support Snow Leopard, however, that does not remove the fact that it's rock solid and will continue to be run by owners of older hardware for years to come. Upgrading older hardware to Mountain Lion may or may not be advantageous for some folks.

I agree no one knows how long Apple may or may not support Snow Leopard, however, that does not remove the fact that it's rock solid and will continue to be run by owners of older hardware for years to come.

I didn't mean to imply that it wouldn't (for a few years yet), but don't expect either Apple to support it or users to continue using it for 14 years like XP. Apple adds irresistible features to tempt users away from even well-liked versions (look at the Tiger figures for example, everyone LOVED Tiger).

Upgrading older hardware to Mountain Lion may or may not be advantageous for some folks.

I did, in fact, say exactly this in my own post. Quoting:

If your hardware is quite old and/or just barely meets the required spec for ML, and you know you're going to be replacing it soon, you might opt to just stay where you are.